Communication

Identifying and sharing postharvest best practice on-farm and online

Historically, vegetable levy investment has been on increasing productivity and finding production efficiencies. From around 2010, industry has sought to increase vegetable consumption. Postharvest handling, the link between these activities, has received less attention.

Why study this?

Strategies that achieve postharvest efficiency for vegetable farmers can improve quality and shelf life, and reduce costs, resulting in a better product for consumers and greater profits for growers.

What was done

With this project in an early stage, best practice recommendations are being reviewed and evaluated. Many may be out of date, referring to old cultivars grown and stored under very different conditions to today’s crops. The existing recommendations only describe what happens under optimum conditions, but what happens when conditions are less than ideal is also worth knowing.

Where to next?

Once information is collated, initial information packs and an extension plan will be developed for growers. Subsequent stages of the project will focus on making information easily available to growers, via resources and hands-on workshops.